By wyman on 5/28/2009 3:27 PM

This book was simply too phenomenal for me to relegate it to the "In The News" column to the left, so I've decided to post the review here in the blog itself.

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By wyman on 5/28/2009 1:09 PM

My friend Travis Prinzi sends this along, having seen it, apparently, in one of our friend Glenn Lucke's tweets.

Is that the right way to put it?  Am I the only person on earth who doesn't Twitter...or even understand it...or even want to?

Anyway, watch this. 

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By wyman on 5/27/2009 1:54 PM

I like Eugene Curry. He's a baptist (pastor of First Baptist Church Granada Hills in California) with a healthy respect for catholicity.  I share in that respect.  His state baptist newspaper recently published an article he wrote on Baptists and the Nicene Creed.  It's interesting, and I appreciate Eugene letting me post it here.  But here is his blog as well.

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By wyman on 5/26/2009 10:01 AM

James Grant has linked to Tim Challies' post concerning C.S. Lovett's 1959 book, Soul-Winning Made Easy: The Encounter Method. 

Now, I'm thrilled to see this because I heard Mark Dever quote a good bit of this in the audio from some conference held earlier this year (don't remember when or where, but it's Dever talking about evangelism).  And I recall thinking, when Dever was reading some of this, "Man, I would just love to see that!"  And now, thanks to Challies, here it is!

Anyway, I'm including just one of the pictures from the book, but you really must go to Challies' site and see all of these and read the captions.

I do want to tread carefully here.  I am sure that Bro. Lovett was a fine Christian man who genuinely wanted to see people saved.  And I'm also sure that I'm probably light years behind where he was in terms of being a soul-winner.  But the methods he outlines in this book...or maybe better stated, the evangelistic methodology he appears to have embraced, strikes me as extremely naive and wrong.

If only as a cautionary tale, this little glimpse at one idiosyncratic approach to evangelism has real value. 

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By wyman on 5/23/2009 3:19 PM

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By wyman on 5/19/2009 1:46 PM

I had the privilege last Sunday night of delivering the 2009 Baccalaureate sermon to the Terrell Academy Senior Class.  This is the fourth such sermon I've delivered here, as the Baccalaureate Service rotates between our church and the Dawson United Methodist Church across the street.

I'm providing the audio here if anybody is interested.  Each year I preach this message I include some random bits of advice at the end. 

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By wyman on 5/14/2009 2:08 PM

As a Christian and an American I grieve over what the Pope rightly called "the culture of death" some years back, and, indeed, I want to exercise my rights as a citizen to vote well on questions of life and to see the laws of the land once again come to value human life.

My brother in ministry, Scott Kerlin, has forwarded on a brief clip of John Piper addressing the issue, and I found it particularly moving and well-said.

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By wyman on 5/12/2009 2:36 PM

No, really.  It is.

This is from an article from the June 4, 1899 edition of The New York Journal. 

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By wyman on 5/10/2009 9:41 AM

I'm no poet and I rarely write poetry.  I do love reading poetry though!

Today is my 35th birthday.  I mention it only because I feel strange today.  And so I've written a poem trying to explain why.

It's laughably bad and violates, I suspect, every rule of poetry.  But I don't claim to know any of the rules of poetry, and it is my poem, and I've tried to express what I'm thinking and feeling. 

And maybe that's enough. 

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By wyman on 5/8/2009 6:22 AM

Most Baptist pastors (myself included) would love to imagine that they might have just a little bit of the kind of ministry and influence that a man like John Dagg had.  A prolific pastor, educator (served as President of Mercer University), and writer (wrote the first systematic theology by a Baptist in the U.S.), Dagg's name is remembered, his words are quoted, and I note that his picture graces the masthead at the Founder's site as well.

Dagg left a legacy, and, in truth, everybody hopes they leave a legacy.

Dagg's success is what makes the pictures of his grave that my friend Darrell Paulk snapped and sent me that much more moving.  There's a stark simplicity about this that, for some reason, has jarred me.  It doesn't sadden me, mind you, it's just given me a jolt of perspective. 

No matter what you achieve, no matter to what heights you ascend, no matter what you accomplish, remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.

This is why the greatest successes and the greatest legacies must be rooted in the glorious, life-giving, meaning-giving, resurrected Son of the living God, who raises dust and breathes life into us.  That's where Dagg's true success is.  May ours be as well.

Here are the pictures.  Thank you Darrell for taking them.

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